Anticancer drugs, which have recently been actively developed and are actually used in anticancer therapy, are mostly drugs targeting cancer cells that proliferate rapidly. In the case of anticancer therapy using such drugs, it appears that cancer cells are effectively killed in the initial stage, suggesting that cancer is treated. However, cancer stem cells remaining in the body are not removed, and thus cancer recurrence and/or metastasis actively occurs. Ultimately, problems often arise resistance to existing anticancer therapy appears. For this reason, cancer stem cells have recently been of increasing interest. It is known that cancer stem cells are cancer cells that have the ability to self-renew unlimitedly, like ordinary stem cells, and proliferate slowly, unlike ordinary cancer cells, and also have the ability to self-renew or differentiate, which is characteristic of stem cells. Furthermore, such cancer stem cells are known to have mechanisms different from those of previously known cancer cells. However, studies on cancer stem cells have not yet been actively conducted, and particularly, there are little or no studies on drugs for treating cancer stem cells, which target cancer stem cells (Korean Patent Application No. 10-2011-0066035).
Accordingly, it is expected that the development of a composition for treating cancer stem cells, which is effective against cancer stem cells, can provide an effective therapeutic method that can increase the cancer treatment effect and that can inhibit cancer recurrence and/or metastasis.